This invention relates to extendible legrests and to upholstered articles of furniture which are provided with such legrests.
Extendible legrests are well known in the furniture industry. They are particularly popular in recliners where such a legrest is supported by a series of four bar linkages for movement between a retracted or stored position where it is vertically oriented at the front of the furniture frame and a leg-supporting extended position where it is generally horizontal and spaced from the furniture frame.
Existing extensible legrest mechanisms are incompatible with many popular types of furniture. For example, furniture units with sofa sleeper mechanisms are generally not provided with extensible legrests because of space constraints. Within the normal dimensions of such pieces of furniture, there is inadequate space to accommodate both the mattress/deck assembly of the sleeper unit, and the mechanical components of an extendible legrest assembly. The configurations of legrest mechanisms are often not compatible with the spaces available in sleeper furniture frames, and various components of legrest mechanisms would interfere with normal operation of sleeper mechanisms.
In one previous proposal disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,861,101, an upholstered piece of furniture with a sleeper mechanism is combined with an extendible legrest mechanism. This prior patent discloses a sleeper unit with a shallow legrest assembly which, excepting the drive mechanism, is mounted forwardly of the front rail of the furniture frame. All pivots in the legrest support linkages are positioned forwardly of the front rail. The drive mechanism is mounted inside the arm, and it drives one of the forward links in a forward direction. Due to the fact that the forward links inherently travel a greater distance than the rear links, the drive mechanism of U.S. Pat. No. 4,861,101 has an output stroke of substantial length.
The present invention relies in part on the discovery that a more effective mechanism is made possible by utilizing a partial front rail, and by positioning some components of the mechanism in the space which lies below the bottom surface of the front rail. The present invention also utilizes a different and improved interconnection between the four-bar linkages which support the legrest from the furniture frame. These and other aspects of the invention will be set forth in greater detail subsequently in this specification.